Virginia Heffernan on the Early Sesame Street's Unsuitability for Kids Today

In a funny article for The New York Times Magazine, Virginia Heffernan explains why the earliest "Sesame Street" television episodes are unsuitable for toddlers today according -- apparently -- to the current executive producer of the show, Carol-Lynn Parente. Heffernan mentions the following warning (written on the DVD case and repeated by a cartoon character at the beginning of the first DVD itself): "These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child."

I was taken aback by that warning, too, until we actually sat down and watched the shows. Luke found them incredibly boring. Tongue in cheek, Heffernan explains first that the subject matter is too gritty, that it promotes bad habits and dangerous behaviours, and then that it's too pastoral. The piece is written in such a way as to indicate that, while Heffernan herself feels otherwise, the current producer of "Sesame Street" actually does believe the early shows were rife with unsuitable  material. But Carol-Lynn Parente is quoted verbatim only twice. It'd be interesting to read a proper, serious interview with her on this question.

I don't think it's unsuitable subject matter that's the problem -- I'd guess that the warning is more about the fact that large sections of the episodes don't stand up particularly well. They are dated.  Most of the animated sequences are still as captivating today as they were thirty years ago but a lot of the rest of the filmed stuff moves slowly and just doesn't have a lot of energy. (Definitely the stuff with the actors and even some of the stuff with the puppets, who haven't fully developed as characters yet.)  The earliest episodes are mostly entertaining only in a nostalgic way -- you have to have watched them as a kid to find them entertaining now. 

Another point: Heffernan seems to think that some of the early material was particularly unsuited to the show's stated target audience, inner-city kids. She has this to say about the soporific "milk comes from cows" scene that Luke found so boring:

The biggest surprise of the early episodes is the rural — agrarian, even — sequences. Episode 1 spends a stoned time warp in the company of backlighted cows, while they mill around and chew cud. This pastoral scene rolls to an industrial voiceover explaining dairy farms, and the sleepy chords of Joe Raposo’s aimless masterpiece, “Hey Cow, I See You Now.” Chewing the grass so green/Making the milk/Waiting for milking time/Waiting for giving time/Mmmmm.

Oh, what’s that? Right, the trance of early “Sesame Street” and its country-time sequences. In spite of the show’s devotion to its “target child,” the “4-year-old inner-city black youngster” (as The New York Times explained in 1979), the first episodes join kids cavorting in amber waves of grain — black children, mostly, who must be pressed into service as the face of America’s farms uniquely on “Sesame Street.”

But a familiarity with farm life and farm animals has always been a part of  the "classical education" (I'm trying to think of a better term) of toddlers and preschoolers -- and it still is today.  Most kids can identify cows, sheep, pigs and so on long before they ever confront one in real life. Often the sounds they make are among a kid's first words. Even when that kid lives in a city. Families today may not own cows or pigs or chickens (or even drink milk or eat meat) but they probably have a few farm animal toys hanging around, not to mention at least a couple of books featuring such creatures." Sesame Street's" mandate was to prepare inner-city kids for school, wasn't it? It's a matter of cultural literacy -- and representations of  farm animals are ubiquitous in the culture of childhood. You could argue that this will no longer be true as farm life become increasingly irrelevant in today's society but the imagery doesn't seem to be fading with time. It's everywhere. And it's still easy to find farm animals on "Sesame Street" productions today, albeit presented in a more entertaining way.

For the same reason -- fostering a familiarity with cultural literacy-- today's "Sesame Street's" newest character is Abby Cadabby, a "fairy god-daughter."  (Of course, first and foremost, the idea of a fairy god-daughter is funny and entertaining. And yes, she doesn't reinforce an accepted idea about a kind of character in fairy tales so much as turn it on that idea on its  head, but still.) Fairy tale characters are not found in any child's  actual environment (inner-city or otherwise). But they're an important feature of the culture of childhood nonetheless.

Just one other thing: I've got to defend poor, poor Gordon's character. Heffernan writes:

Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

Okay, so the milk does look dangerously whole but Gordon is not a stranger to Sally! No, no, no! It's made perfectly clear in that scene that Gordon is her teacher.

Heffernan article found via Daddy Types.